Leitmotif

A leitmotif is a repeated musical phrase or motif, or sometimes a theme. Its purpose, especially in programme music, is often to characterize a person, as in ballet or opera, or to identify the reappearance of a particular situation, subject, phenomenon, idea or feeling. In literature a leitmotif is any characteristic, and especially any symbol, reappearing as an attribute or accompanying thing associated with a character, place, time or situation. In common language the dominant theme that expresses itself in a person's life is that person's leitmotif; a kind of pattern.